GARDENING UNDER WILLIAM AND MARY 207 
Leeds, though then but a village in comparison with the 
Leeds of to-day, is thus described by Celia Fiennes 1 “ A large 
town, severall large streetes, cleane and well pitch'd, and good 
houses all built of stone. Some have good gardens and steps 
up to their houses, and walls before them." Of Bedford she 
writes : “ It is an old building washed by the river Ouse ... its 
stored with very good ffish, and those which have gardens on its 
brinke keepes sort of . . . Baskets which keeps the ffish by 
chaines to the sides of the Banks in each man’s garden. It 
(the river) runs by a ground which is made into a fine bowling 
green . . . well kept with seates and summer houses in it." At 
Newcastle she finds—“ This country all about is full of this 
Coale; y e sulphur of it taints y e aire and it smells strongly to 
strangers ... its a noble town . . . and most resembles London 
of any place in England. . . . There is a pleasant bowling- 
green, a Little walk out of the town w th a Large gravel walk 
round it, w th two Rows of trees on each side. . . . There is a 
pretty Garden, by y e side a shady walk, its a sort of spring 
garden where the Gentlemen and Ladyes walke in the evening ; 
—there is a green house in the garden." 
Spring Gardens, which she here refers to, were chosen as 
the favourite resort of fashion in London. They had been in 
existence since the first quarter of the century, and originally 
were part of the royal park of St. James, as appears from 
entries in the Exchequer Rolls : 
1617. “ digging planting etc: of roses in the Spring garden in (St* 
James’) Park . . . Gardeners, women weeders : in the spring garden . . . 
Pheasants and wild fowl in the spring garden.” 
By the middle of the century, however, it was a public garden, 
of which the street now bearing its name marks the site. 
In London many old gardens were already disappearing, and 
Celia Fiennes writes thus in her diary : “ There was formerly 
in y e Citty severall houses of y e Noblemens w th Large gardens 
and out houses and great attendances, but of Late are pulled 
down, and built into streetes and squares and called by y e 
names of y e noblemen ;—and this practise by almost all even 
just to y e Court, excepting one or two. Northumberland and 
Bedford House, Lord Montagues, . . . and Whitehall with its 
